Saturday, October 01, 2005

Do you remember the stories of murder, rape and unspeakable atrocities by gangs of vicious thugs in the New Orleans Superbowl in the aftermath of Katrina? Here is a more recent report from The Times-Picayune, the local paper:

After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.

"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.

The real total was six, Beron said.

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.

And since the MSM was willing to ask the "hard" race questions in the storm's aftermath, when will it ask itself whether such rumor-mongering and the attendant suspension of ordinary journalistic standards was possible because the elites in MSM were willing to believe the worst about the generally African-American underclass at both locations?

You betcha they were. From my point of view, stereotyping and besmirching folk for what the look like or where they live, believing the worst of them at a drop of a hat while condescending with apparent concern and empathy is a stomach churning vice that makes open prejudice seem almost wholesome. We have seen and heard too much of this dishonesty lately.

When my brother and I went to New Orleans years ago we were constantly entreated not to go to this area or that area or even to cross to the opposite side of the road that our first hotel was on. What a load of cobblers. The very first thing that we did once we had checked in was to start busting these taboos. We went everywhere and we never had any hassle at all from anyone.